It's been too cold to go in the garage for ages, but I finally managed a bit
today. I wanted to get on with the scuttle, as I can now start mounting things like the wipers and the heater in
it.
Firstly, I checked out the wiper motor itself, and that the wiring worked. After connecting up the battery, the first thing I noticed was that the number plate light was on. At least that works, while I was looking at the lights I checked the reversing lamp worked and that was fine too. At least the wiring loom seems to be pretty good. The wiper motor itself took a while, until I realised that the drive cam needed to be installed for the motor to drive the self-park switch. After that it was fine. The intermittent relay, though, seems to have a period of about 10 seconds, which seems rather long. Still, I'm not intending to use the car much in the wet so that's no problem.
I keep wondering if the exhausts are going to fit properly after their trip
back to Dax. To check things a bit, I bolted the two manifolds together to see if they matched each other, they
did seem to, at least on a cursory examination so hopefully fitting them will be a bit easier than last time.
After that I took off the scuttle, quite easy now after all the rivnuts and so on have been fitted. I then drilled the required holes for the wiper wheel boxes, after which I realised that I was going to need something to support the wheel boxes inside the scuttle. The wheel boxes I have got have a support tube that's cut on the diagonal. This is fine for a scuttle that's flat, but the Dax one has a nice flange for the wipers to stick throgh. This means I probably just need a straight piece of tubing. I'll make yet another trip to MacKay's to see if they have got something.
However, it's clear that there's going to be a bit of problem making the wheel
boxes and the ducting for the demister outlets coexist. The problem will be fitting the ducting in with the wheel
boxes in a suitable position, I may have to modify the ducting in the same sort of way as I had to do with the
Westfield a long time ago.
Coo, a Wednesday and in the garage. I had bought some alumimium tubing that
fitted ober the wheelboxes and this allowed me to make something that supports the 'box properly. With some fiddling
about, I could see that if I got the wheelboxes in I could just about "pop" the ducting around the back
of them.
So, I cut a bit of tubing to the right length, made it fit, decided it was too long, made it fit, devided it was now too short, etc., etc. Still, this is what it looks like on the inside of the scuttle. Notice the silicone sealant used in a vain attempt at stopping the blasted thing leaking.
On the outside I used a rubber washer (made from half a grommet) and some more
sealant. Somehow I can feel the water landing on my feet already...
Another weekend, and I fitted the other wheelbox in much the same way as the
previous one. After that I could fit the demister ducting. This was just simply bonded using silicone sealant.
I could use Würth but I'd like at least some chance of being able to get it off again.
It actually turned out to be pretty simple to pop the ducting around the back of the wheelboxes, as long as they stuck through the scuttle sufficiently.
After that it was onto the wiper mechanics. I tried to make this work at first by attaching the wiper motor to the front surface of the scuttle. (That is, the left "wall" in this photo here.)
However, after some fiddling around it was clear the wiper rack wasn't keen on going round the sorts of angles that were necessary with that sort of arrangement.
So, I had to resort to the approach suggested in the build manual. This relies
on using Würth to bond a plate in to the "roof" of the scuttle to which the motor is bolted. However,
there was a problem in that the Dax wiper kit appears, from the instructions in the manual, to come with a couple
of special "big head" bolts that have very broad flat heads. These are suitable for putting on the other
side of a bonded in panel. I didn't have anything like this at all and at first I thought I was going to have to
go to Dax to buy some of theirs. Then I had a brainwave. I took an exhaust mounting that looked like the one in
the photo here,
and with the aid of various knives and other instruments of destruction, extracted the
mounting bolts and flanges from the rubber. This gave me the two "big head" bolts shown here.
This meant I could cut an aluminium plate of the correct size and bond it into the roof of the scuttle.
After that I fiddled around with the wiper rack tubing for ages to try and get
something to fit properly. After much pratting about it looked like this photo which I'm happy with. I have tried
connecting it up to the car and the rack moves properly, which at one point I thought was not going to be possible.
Finally, I set about bolting in the heater. This would mounted fairly easily but I now
need to work out where the pipework is going to go, and I also need to be careful about where the pipes appear
with respect to the header tank and battery on the inside of the engine compartment.
For just a short while this evening I tried to work out where the pipe work
to the heater would have to go. I may have managed to do this right, but only time will tell. In the meantime,
the scuttle is now ready to be put back onto the car and bolted down properly. (In preparation for being taken
off again!)
Oops, I nearly forgot the windscreen washer! (I did that too on the Westfield.)
I drilled a hole for the washer jet, having first rejected having two of them and fitted the tubing in about the right place. The problem with drilling holes like this is being sure you've got it in the right place. When you are looking at something like the scuttle moulding it's just too irregular to get a decent datum point. The cure, as always really is to measure lots and drill only when 100% certain.
I secured the tubing with some blobs of Würth. (In the photo you can just about see them, along with the masking tape that's holding the tubing while the black death sets.
in case you've got to this frame directly and can't get out, go here.